Author's Note: This is my first Lucifer story. It's set after Lucifer kills Cain and Chloe sees his Devil face. I do not have a beta, so please excuse any mistakes! The title is based off a Linkin Park song that I found quite fitting. Read and review :)
It had been two weeks since Chloe Decker had seen Lucifer Morningstar's Devil Face. It had been two weeks since he'd seen her horrified face. It had been two weeks since he'd heard the pained tone in her voice as she whispered that it was all true. It had been two weeks since he had heard her voice at all. It had been two weeks since he fled the scene, battered and bloodied and broken.
"Lucifer?" Linda called out into his penthouse. He smiled a bit. Such a good doctor.
The Devil looked up from his drink toward the elevator that opened to his penthouse. Linda stopped in her tracks when she saw him. Never had she seen him so utterly broken and totally disheveled. His hair, normally styled perfectly, was a curly mess and parts of it fell across his forehead, his eyes were red rimmed, and his stubble was fuller than she'd ever seen it. The crisp white shirt he was wearing was untucked, mostly unbottoned, wrinkly - as if he'd been sleeping in it, and his sleeves were rolled up above his elbows.
"Lucifer..." She said softly.
He looked away from her quickly and stared down into his nearly empty glass. "Doctor. I am perfectly fine." His voice was rough with disuse, but his tone was sharper than she had anticipated it being.
"Have you been here this whole time?" She asked and looked around the place. It looked as if the only parts of his penthouse he had been using were the bar and, well, the couch. Obviously. When he didn't answer, she spoke again. "Dan tried to come here. I've tried to come here. Amenadiel has tried to come here. Even Maze has tried."
She had just listed every person but the one person he had wanted to come speak with him. Every. Single. One. He looked up at Linda again and his eyes were more broken than ever. "Yes, well, I am the Devil. If I don't want to be seen or found, I won't be."
"Then why have you allowed me to see you today?" She sat on the other end of his couch.
"Because I wanted to tell you, Doctor, that my therapy is at an end," He looked at her briefly and then back down to his single malt whiskey. Bringing the glass to his lips, he swallowed a bit of the burning liquid.
"Lucifer, I can imagine that the last couple of weeks have been awful for you, that you're feeling vulnerable and hurt. Let me help you. Please," She said quietly.
"Your services are no longer needed, Doctor," He said with a tone of finality. He crossed one leg over the other and leaned back into the corner of the couch and tried to give off an aura of confidence that he didn't possess.
"Then what about my friendship?" She asked.
He scoffed, but was clearly a little unsettled by her question. "The Devil doesn't have friends. Especially not human friends. A bit counter productive - mortal and immortal. Bound to get a bit complicated," Lucifer pressed his lips together into a painfully forced smile.
"But you want us to be friends, or you did," She said. The sadness in her voice was unmistakable.
His eyes moved up and down her body quickly before he looked away. "Things change."
"Have you talked to anyone? Since Chloe saw your Devil Face?" The moment Decker's first name left Linda's lips, Lucifer flinched visibly, and then his face hardened.
"This conversation is boring. I think it's time you took your leave," He said curtly and set his glass down on the coffee table.
"This conversation is boring, or painful?" She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Tell me, Doctor. You've heard the phrase 'don't poke the bear,' correct?" He asked as he leaned forward toward her. "Well, I assure you poking the Devil is much worse." His eyes flashed red so briefly that it was plain it was halfhearted and forced.
"What're you going to do, Lucifer? Hurt me?"
"That's what I do, Doctor," He said smoothly.
"You won't hurt me. You're not evil. You punish evil. You've told me that hundreds of times," She said plainly and shrugged her shoulda. "So, stop the charade and talk to me."
"There's nothing left to discuss, I'm afraid. It's very nearly all wrapped up - pretty bow and all."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going back to Hell, Doctor. Where I belong," He laced his fingers together over his knee. "I've just a few more things to tie up here, and then I'll fetch Mazikeen and we will end this extended holiday."
Linda's mouth dropped open in disbelief. Lucifer was willingly going to return to Hell, and he was going to take Maze with him. He was serious. He had given up. Linda gasped, "What have I ever done to you?" Lucifer's faux confidence and self-assurance wavered a bit and he raised his eyebrows. "I understand that you're hurt. I understand you've had your heart broken," Lucifer scoffed again and she held up a finger as a warning. "But that doesn't mean you get to hurt everyone else by leaving."
"Leaving is for the best. For everyone," He said firmly. He ground his molars together.
"It's selfish. You'd be taking two friends of so many people away. You'd be severing those friendships forever. How is that best for anyone?" She was angry with him, and he hadn't expected that.
"I belong in Hell. I am the Lord of Hell," He smiled that smile - the one that showed he knew how hurtful he was being - and shrugged dismissively. "Maze is a demon. Hell is our home."
"Do what you want, Lucifer," She said as she stood angrily. "It's what you always do anyway." She stormed away from him toward the elevator and her heels clicked hard on his floors.
When he heard her press the elevator button, he said, "Linda?"
She crossed her arms, huffed, and turned back to look at him. "What?" She asked in exasperation.
"For what it's worth... Thank you," He said quietly. He did not turn to look at her, and she watched him take another sip of his whiskey. The elevator doors opened and she stepped inside as she wiped the tears furiously from her face.
Lucifer picked up his phone from the table. Disappointment filled his features all over again when he saw "The Detective" had not tried to contact him. How could he have expected anything different? Lucifer was the Devil - not some metaphor, not some abstract concept. He was the literal Devil. The Prince of Darkness. Satan. Belial. Beelzebub. King of Evil. And she... Well, she was not any of that, nor could she ever be. She was, truly, the exact opposite. She was a miracle. A true, mortal, flesh and blood miracle of God.
Closing all of the other text, missed call, and voicemail notifications, he opened Maze's text thread. She'd texted him the least amount of times out of the people who had tried to contact him in the last 14 days, but Lucifer was surprised she had texted him, called him, or tried to find him at all. His thumbs typed a message to her quickly.
We need to talk, Mazikeen.
He had hardly set his phone down when it beeped with a response already. Shocked, he looked back at the screen to see a reply from Maze.
On my way.
"Oh, Maze." A small and genuine smile, the first in two weeks, graced his handsome face. Despite how much the demon hated him at the moment, how many times Lucifer had hurt her and made her feel unimportant, she was still coming. Without question. He could make it up to her and he would start by taking them home.
"When you were standing in the wake of devastation, when you were waiting on the edge of the unknown with the cataclysm raining down, insides crying 'save me now,' you were there - impossibly alone"